Press Release

HealthBI President Scott McFarland to Describe Proven Model for Medicaid Population Health on Payor Issues Panel

At upcoming Becker’s Revenue Cycle conference, former president of population health at Cleveland Clinic will dispel myth that major improvements in Medicaid population health outcomes can’t be achieved at large scale

Intent on upending the longstanding belief that payors and providers can’t cost-effectively scale personalized and proactive healthcare for complex populations, HealthBI president Scott McFarland will be a featured panelist on the upcoming panel “The Most Important Issues Facing the Payor and Provider Relationship” at Becker’s Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago. The panel takes place at 9:45 a.m. on Thursday, September 20. Learn more about the event or register to attend here.

McFarland is one of the industry’s foremost thought leaders in complex patient population health for Medicaid and Medicare plans, especially for patients burdened with two or more chronic conditions, including behavioral health problems.

In his previous positions as CEO of the public health system hospitals in Hawaii, and as president of Cleveland Clinic’s population health division, McFarland helped usher in some of the earliest clinical and technology-driven innovations in the practice of value-based care. It was also where he first began questioning why value-based care couldn’t be cost-effectively applied to the outpatient and community-based settings, where it would have the most widespread impact.

Today, as president of HealthBI, McFarland’s teams are deploying an efficient and scalable model that includes automated workflow management, effective patient engagement strategy and innovative personalized medicine to scale true value-based care at the point of healthcare delivery across the care continuum.

Over 63,000 clinical sites across 50 states use the HealthBI CareEmpower® platform to identify at-risk patients and the appropriate interventions, and to coordinate this care with other providers.

CareEmpower is also the provider enablement technology for the nation’s largest payors, including Aetna, Anthem and UnitedHealthGroup and Aetna. CareEmpower actively manages Medicaid populations in over 20 states, with planned deployments in at least seven additional states in 2019. To date, the platform has been deployed to improve care for over 22 million lives.

Patient populations in crisis

With commercial payors increasingly taking over the management of Medicaid health plans, they must avoid the population health mistakes of the past, and instead, make collaboration the heart of the solution. This is critical in a fragmented healthcare system. Further, the solution must give all providers comprehensive insight into the physical, behavioral and sociocultural factors of these complex populations—and the most effective, efficient integrated care for them.

The following numbers starkly underscore why.

According to MedPAC, 17.1 percent of Medicaid/CHIP enrollees have only Fair or Poor Health, second only to Medicare’s 26.1 percent. In comparison, only 6.1 percent of privately insured are categorized as being in Fair or Poor Health. MedPAC also cited a national health survey that found a full 25 percent of Medicaid enrollees have had at least one emergency room visit, with the most recent visit for a “serious health problem.” Further, more than half of Medicaid and CHIP enrollees are minority populations, who have notoriously experienced historical disparities in healthcare access and outcomes.

Meanwhile, enrollment and spending are continuously climbing, with annual spending now at around $576 billion.

“It’s past time to turn around poor health outcomes and erase disparities for our most vulnerable populations. I’m looking forward to sharing with attendees at the Becker’s conference how HealthBI has deployed a nationally scalable, single integrated platform for practice-level value-based care,” stated McFarland.

About HealthBI

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, HealthBI, a company of Equality Health, was created by a team of industry leaders and physicians to fill the need for solutions that enable providers and engage patients for better quality outcomes. By arming providers and payors with real time insights and a platform to seamlessly collaborate across organizations and care settings, HealthBI prevents patients from slipping through the cracks. Today, the company’s care management and care coordination platform for population health management is the most widely deployed in the nation—used in over 63,000 clinical sites across 50 states. HealthBI customers have reported results that span from a 25 percent decrease in 30 day re-admits to a nearly 300 percent improvement in closing gaps in patient care. To learn more about HealthBI, visit www.healthbi.com and follow HealthBI on Twitter and LinkedIn.